what is the single life-changing trajectory-changing moment for me, was being exposed to a world of education that offered me a new insight into how i saw the world. so, i just wanted to do that for somebody else, that's all. >> reporter: out of thousands of applicants, oprah hand-picked 72 girls. >> do you think i'm good enough to be selected to go to the school? >> i think that you are. good enough. >> reporter: girls from shanty towns. >> 60 families living together. >> the house that i live in with my mom is a very small house. >> reporter: girls who experienced trauma and the hardships engrained in poverty. girls a lot like a young oprah winfrey. >> at the time that i grew up in mississippi, it was very much like south africa. it was apartheid mississippi. it was. and segregated schools, no running water, no electricity. which was just the way, you don't think, oh, gee, everybody else has it and i don't. that's just the way i grew up. it's amazing that i've come from that to my own ipad. >> reporter: the girls and their families understood the life-altering guilt of education. >> you wil